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Esson listening to these actors, who were so cautious about moving, experiencedthe same sensation as an English critic who had earlier remarked that "We arelistening to English spoken with watchful care and slightly timorous hesitation, asthough it were a learned language." Sometimes singing, sometimes chanting, Essonthought: never whining.Watching these actors - amateurs! - he remembered that their style simplyrevealed they were untrained.Yeats had written that this style might have come from the French theatres whereactors like Bernhardt and De Max could hold an audience in thrall and do absolutelynothing."I once," said Yeats, "counted twenty-seven quite slowly before anybody on a fairlywell filled staged moved, as it seemed, so much as an eyelash.""Of course," he added, "our amateurs were poor and crude beside those greatactors, but they followed them as well as they could and got an audience of artisans,for the most part, to admire them."The learning amateurs, "poor and crude", were William and Frank Fay. Theformer, an electrician by trade, who had travelled about Ireland as an advance manwith a circus, said that his actors were quiet and natural not because they had seenSarah Bernhardt or Edouard De Max, but because they did not know what to do.They had not learned to go wrong.And while Esson, when the curtain fell on The King's Threshold, had marvelledat the highly charged declamatory style and the artistry of the piece he was puzzledby the poor house.He wondered if perhaps Dubliners had as little interest in the protocol of a poet'splace at the king's table as people might in Melbourne. Esson went to the Abbeyevery night he was in Dublin and every day too to attend rehearsals for new plays.Now, fifteen years later, as he got off the train at Oxford, he saw along the platformthe tall figure of the great man. Older yes, his hair now an iron grey but with thepince-nez on his nose and his welcoming hand. The same warm and courteous man.After a formal greeting, Yeats led Esson to a cab, and directed the driver to takethem to Broad Street. The Australian noticed Yeats was carrying a book."What are you reading?" he asked.Yeats showed him the cover: Rustler's Roost by Zane Grey."Do you read this stuff, Esson?""Well-er -""Oh you should! Essential for train journeys."They said nothing the rest of the ride.After he had opened the front door and waved him in, Yeats whispered to him"You are not the only one to have married since we last met, nor is your wife theonly who is pregnant."A good looking woman came into the hall. Red-brown hair; a fine smile; aboutthirty."Mr Esson. How do you do?" And English.Over dinner, they recalled their first meeting all those years ago."You were there at a golden time Esson," said Yeats. "Those first ten years ofthis century were not only our best years, but there has never been a more brilliantdecade in the cultural life of Ireland in all its history.""Were you in Dublin for The Playboy, Mr Esson?""Needless to say," said Yeats, "We were denounced not only in Dublin but inLondon too and later in America."too and later in America.""That's not so surely."WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 45